The Countdown Begins

(Elder Mumford will finish his missionary service in just 28 days from now.)

Here is his e-mail from 7/6/10:

Dear Everyone,

First, thanks for all the updates. I love to hear about everyone's adventures. Also, I got the package in the mail yesterday! Woooo! Thank you so much for all the candies, almond joys, reces'ses peices, and CHEESE! We're actually topped off on cheese for a long time now, we still have 2 bricks left, which should easily hold us out until August. Thanks for the great food, I can finish my mission with a little taste of home :)

Also, thanks for the 'Hymns that sound like movies' CD. I've only listened to about half of it so far, but it turns out to be mainly my favorite hymns from some of the other CDs. So now I have another CD just full of my favorites. Thanks so much. Also I love my 3 presents that Ill be getting in August.

(Gracias por el queso.)

Thank you for helping me through every part of my mission, and getting everything set up to be the smoothest transition possible. (Although I think that simply no matter what I do It's going to be a bit of a rough transition :). I will have to take up the offer of falling asleep for a few hours once I get home. Really the only thing at this point that is difficult is simply being very tired all the time. It's not hard to wake up on time, it's simply hard to survive all the way until 10:30 without getting exhausted.

So looking back, the things that generally all missionaries want most is:

1. The progress and happiness of those that they work with,

2. Letters and pictures.

3. Sleep.

I've never been so tired in my whole life, nor do I think I ever will be, until I have a baby :) But this is a time in my life where I have grown the most ever. It really scares me to think about what kind of person I would have been (or rather what kind of person I would not have been), if I had not gone on a mission. As President Albrecht says, this mission is like a mini^life. A head start for the rest of our lives. It essentially gives us a dedicated chunk of time where we will inherently change ourselves and develop valuable attributes through the work that we are doing. It is a time without distractions, (or at least without 99% of the normal distractions in life), where we can completely focus on other people, and by doing so learn so much about how to become not just productive, but tremendously influential in building the Kingdom of God. Our efforts here, though few and seemingly inconsequential, will have ripple effects through the coming generations. I think back and I realize just how many people we have taught, how many we have helped, and just how many we have given a good image to. And I have no idea where that will go, but when my time runs out here, I can know that my efforts will have been effective in progressing god's Kingdom. And even more than that, I can do so much more each successive 2 years after this.

There was a wonderful quote shared by President Hill. It was my first day ever in Tokyo, and we were in the mission car, President Hill was driving all of us to the Hombu. He turned around in his seat and said to us, "Elders... this will not be the best 2 years of your whole life --- because living with another man 24/7 is a completely unnatural state." :) Basically, As incredible and unique as this mission is (and we will never have an experience like it again), I don't think God wants us to go back to obscurity. He doesnt want us to lose the ability to feel the spirit that we gained on our missions. We should be able to use what we learned here to infinitely multiply that potential back in our own country.

Elder Nielson (the one who gave mne the bear), once said along the lines of;

'One reason why we are so limited with rules here on our missions, may be to build our potential future - When we have a problem as a missionary, maybe a problem with our companion, a habit or something that is bothering us... we can't do much about it. Our options are very limited. As a normal person with an unpleasant roomate, we can simply walk out of the room. We can plug in our earphones and crank up our favorite muscic, and our problems dissapear. But as missionaries we must either RESOLVE the problem, or go crazy. One reason why our rescources are so limited, may be that it forces us to rely on the rescources that we Do have (The spirit, the scriptures, personal revelation, prayer), which end up being the most important rescources anyways.'

'When we are confused or dont know something about what to do or how to live, as normal people we turn to the internet, or magazines or something for help or guidance. Anything we want to know is generally an instant away. As missionaries our method of finding answers is slow, unless we turn to God. When we have a problem, we really have no real other optiuons than to pray about it and seek an answer. That way we learn how to use our most basic, and really, our most important resources.'

'Then when we return home, we are reintroduced to the OCEAN of resources. And how much more do you think we can accomplish in a wide space now that we have learned to acomplish so much in a limited one? Our potential has just been expanded'.

So I'm excited to come back, not because I want my mission to end, but because I am excited to unlock the great potential that is waiting. The keys to which I gained here, and never would have had them (or at least it would have taken much longer to find them) had I not come. Ill always be greateful for my mission. Now ther are only 4 weeks left for me to see what I can do. Im going to do everything I can , and hope that a few people might gain something from it.

Current Investigators:

1. Shinobu - still cant meet, but I think he still is seeking for an answer. We'll share those scriptures with him as soon as we can.

2. Yoshida - doing great, called us with some questions about the atomnement the other day. He is reading/praying.

3. Taiun - finally managed to communicate to him though chinese scriptures and the chinese pamphlets about Jesus Christ and the Atomenent. Kind of difficult, but I think he has a little more of a solid understanding. He loves coming to church, but the hard part is that he doenst really understnad Japanerse, or English for tha tmatter, and it is hard for him to get much out of it. But he will keep coming, mostly because all the people there are so nice to him.

4. Wakizaka - Great guy, is a little confused about life right now, and his family situation is not so good. He wants to listen to us because he feels that there will be something that we say that he might be able to apply in his life. I think so. If you could pray for him to get the answer in life that he is loking for.

I might interject here with a warning note - my spelling is terrible, because of 2 reasons

1. I havent spelled a lot in english in a while

2. This computer has lag spikes ever 60 seconds or so,k which means that when I am typing it will just stop working for a few moments, then just slpurt all of the tesxt out in an instant, sometimes a little bit switched up. Elder Merrell is having to grapple with the same thing right now and I think it frustrates him a bit :)

By the way, I really haven't mentioned much about Elder Merrell since the first week, he is a really great guy!

He has a great vision for the future, and it might be possible for both of us to go into the industry of games together. We've been talking a bit about our goals and how we might be able to help each other later.

Ill email more later, GOT TO GO emergency..... phone call

see ya, love you bye,

- Elder Mumford.

Happy Birthday Elder Mumford!

Twenty-one years ago, a noble spirit began his earthly experience. Today he celebrates his 21st birthday in Japan, by wholeheartedly serving God, and the wonderful people of Tokyo.

Happy Birthday Elder Martin D Mumford!

The Chronicles of Koiwa

Japan is somewhat famous for their highly sophisticated toilets. Here are some interesting pictures of some of the bathrooms, taken by a fellow Tokyo missionary, Elder Wyman:

This is above the toilet in one of the nicer Tokyo meetinghouses. The buttons say (from left to right) "Stop"; "Rear end"; "softly"; "???"; and "Dry".

Squater style toilet, common in public restrooms, in the park or city.

Which one is the boy's and which one is the girls?

Yup, you can wash your hands immediately after using the bathroom. (Dont worry, the water goes FIRST through the hand wash, and THEN into the bowl :) It's actually quite an efficient use of water!

Now for Elder Mumford's E-mail dated 6-30-10:

Dear Everyone,

This week the rain has been a bit off and on, and the humitidy has been through the roof. Today we had a great P-day. While we were out on the streets the other day, we were looking for an address, and we stumbled across a little park with a lake. Then the lake turned into a river, with really cool looking Japanese-style gardens to either side. So we decided that on P-day we would come back and explore the park. So we woke up bright and early, and booked it over to the river. It turned out that the river was actually really long, and the park extended for quite some time, but we went the entire way by foot and took tons of pictures.

So this was a very fun P-day so far. :)

Also a few things happened durring the week that you should know about;

1. Many of our investigators decided to stop meeting with us. Unfortunate, but they didnt have much more interest, and so we had to say goodbye. Right now we are only really working with 2 people left:

1. Yoshida, who is going to read and pray, and wants to build his faith in Jesus Christ.

2. Shinobu, who is less active, and cuts our hair. We're going to get Elder Merrell's haircut on Friday, so we should talk more then.

And that's it. We could really use your help and your prayers for these people. They are in percarious circumstances, they both want to come closer to Christ but don't really know how to find that answer for themselves. That is both of their challenges, to know for themselves. If you have any advice we could share (especially with Shinobu) about how to know thast this church is true for yourself, I would love to hear it next week. He has read the entire Book of Mormon, and is working on the Bible, but still has not found a difinitive 'answer' that has proved to him that the church is true. We told him that the answer is not going to be found on a single, hidden page in the scriptures somewhere, but the answer will come depending on sincere prayer, study, and the timetable of God. Alright, that is the situation right now.

Thanks for all of your wonderful support on my mission so far. I have loved hearing from all of you. Im sorry I coudn't really give much of a reply, but Im sure that Ill be able to thank each of you personally when I return.

Ok, some interesting stories;

A. We were planning for our week together in the apartment, when suddenly the doorbell rings, and to our great suprise, there is a huge package containing... and Ice Cream Cake! We both opened it up, and it said 'Happy Birthday Elders!'. So Elder Merrell's parents had sent this cake, we were way happy. But we had a bit of a problem, in that our fridge is only so big, and it's already pretty cluttered. So what we ended up having to do was cut the cake into several squares, and individually wrap them in seranwrap, then freeze them. We have been trying to eat as many as we can each day, but it's actually very filling.

(Thank goodness the Merrells sent an ice cream birthday cake! This is what happened the last time the Elders tried baking a birthday cake.)

So we gave another slice to Yoshida, our investigator, and we're going to have to give several more to the Sister Missionaries, because Im not sure we can eat all of it ourselves. Very fun though! And it is so extremely good, after all this time of no sweet it actually overwhelmed me at first. Im not used to that much sugar at once :) Probably some foreshadowing for when I get home

Don't be too discouraged if Im not able to eat super sweet things, or even a lot of anything. I think my ability to eat a lot has gone down a bunch. But no worries, Ill try my best to regain all that :)

(This really was a SAD "Happy Birthday" cake)

B. We were returning home one night, and on the way the last person that we talked to was a nice Japanese man, maybe in his 50's. As the conversation progressed, we were building more and more of our hopes, because the longer he talked, the more he seemed to know about the church. He knew about every book and teaching, and he knew the history of the church in the city where we live, how it used to be a Branch. We were wondering 'who is this guy!? Was he studying a long time ago?' But then he told us that he was a member, and had joined the church 30 years ago. And from that point on it went downhill... He didnt want to ever come back again, but he was so extremely appreciative of us talking to him, but he said that we should probably spend our efforts and time on someone else. It was unfortunate, but he was really set on not coming back to church. He loves the Book of Mormon and everything about us and the church, but just doesnt want to continue I guess.

(Elders with the Higuchi Family)

But the real miracle is that on the way back, walking with him back to our apartment, there was this guy from Nepal who was handing out flyers for his curry restraunt. We were about to pass him, but then this member decided to take one of the flyers. And so we also took one, and started talking to him. It turns out that he has been in Japan for a while, and his name is Mohan. We gave him one of our flyers as well. That was all good and well, but then the NEXT day we saw another miracle.

He Called us at night, and told us that he had read our flyer. He said, maybe we can help each other out, because he had some friends who might be interested in our message, and we could help him by coming to his curry restraunt sometime. :) Well, we do like curry, so maybe we'll go sometime and check up on his friends :)

(Curry- Made by the Elders)

Anyways, Im going to send this letter off, and if there is anything that needs adding, Ill do so.

For now, thank you everyone. I love to hear from you. I love Japan, and I love the experiences Im having here. Ill try to share more and more of them with you each week. I hope that everyone has a good week and has fun! Thanks!

Keep 'em coming! Letters make a missionary's day!

Love,

Elder Martin Mumford

-TOKYO, JAPAN

The Last Transfer!

Excerpts from Elder Mumford's e-mail, dated June 21, 2010:

Dear Everyone,

Happy Fathers Day!

First of all, the transfer information;

1. I will be staying in Koiwa.

2. Elder Williams went to Kisarazu with Elder Bryant.

3. My new companion is Elder Merrell, from California. He also spent a little bit of time at BYU before his mission. He is on his 2nd transfer right now.

So this is it! Just me and Elder Merrell in Koiwa. It should be a great one!

(Mount Fuji on a clear day, as seen from the window of the Shonan, Japan Apartment)

So far so good, the rain hasn't really started yet. Im really suprised, we are supposed to be getting buckets of rain every day, and although it has been cloudy and very humid, nothing's really happened yet. So fortunately, we are still enjoying being out on the streets without getting wet. :)

Elder Merrell is also planning on going into media/games after his mission, so I think that we will get along very well.

Also, some other random news, I now have completed package installment 1 of 2. (It's a smaller one). I will send part 2 in a few weeks, which will contain some more of the heavier items (including Nicholas the bear!). So you can expect a lot of fun things coming your way. In terms of a package coming to Japan, we will always welcome cheese, but in fact at the moment we already have a lot of peanut butter. Thank you though. If I had to think of a request, maybe reese's bits or cups. Elder Merrell is actually allregic to nuts, so anything without nuts should be fine :)

(Nicholas The Bear- an ancient Ainu relic, inherited by Elder Mumford, will soon make his way home to America)

(This bear has made an appearance in every set of pictures that Elder Mumford has sent home. Each time he is sporting a different look. Here, he is shown wearing one of the "stick-on" mustaches that have been so popular with the Japan missionaries.)

Alright, so on to the best part---

Some highlights of the past week;

1. We met with a few people last week, one of which was a little late. So we were just waiting for him at the station, next to the big Sumo statue (where most people meet in Koiwa). As we were waiting, this old, bearded homeless man comes over to us, and asked us for some money. Unfortunately, as missionaries we (1) don't even have much money, and (2) aren't allowed to give money to anyone (It's not even ours). So we had to explain that to him. He saw that we weren't going to give him anything so he was about to leave. Then he reached over, and grabbed my hand and kissed it, which was really wierd, but then he went over to Elder Williams as well, did the same, then dived over and gave him a big wet smacker right on the cheek! Then he laughed and walked away. And while we were just sitting there in shock, our investigator showed up (probably only 2-3 seconds later), and we didnt even have time to laugh about it or figure out what just happened. So that was a rather suprising experience. :)

(This Sumo statue is a popular meeting place in the Koiwa train station. It is common to hear someone say "Just meet me at the Sumo!")

2. We met with Yoshida, our main investigator. We taught him about the plan of salvation, which he thought was nice. And from now on he will try to read and pray to know that it is true. He really does want to know.

VIDEO:

Click "Play" to view Elder Mumford and Elder Williams on a recent Homemade Taco Night.

3. Me and Elder Williams were getting seriously Taco-ed out after a while (w were having them nearly every day), and so we bought tons of vegetables and figured out how to make a really good stir fry to put on rice. So now we have all those ingredients and are doing pretty good. We still have yet to try out the steel-cut oats, but I want to do it soon.

(Jiru Ramen Shop in Tokyo. This is where the locals eat!)

4. Speaking of food, we have the best Ramen in the entire mission in Koiwa (I know everyone says that, but I've tried a LOT of different ramens, and this one is the best one so far!). It's called 'Jiro', and there's a LOT of food that they give you. If we visit Japan agian as a family, that would be a very good place to come.

(Famous garlic, pork ramen dish, served at the Jiru Ramen Shop)

5. This transfer, we are going to stop trying to focus on EVERYONE at once. That just hasn't worked really all that well. We are going to prayerfully select only a few of the top people in the Ward, our Investigators, people that we really can help right now if we focus on them.

At the moment, we have;

a. Yoshida (our investigator)

b. Sekino (another investigator)

c. Shinobu (a less active who has been considering coming back, but still doesnt know if it is true)

There are others, but that is our primary concern right now. Im sure that they would benefit from your prayers.

(Activity at the Shonan Ward Campout)

I just wanted to leave you with a quick thought. Got will never allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able. Our choices are always in our power. He will never allow us to be forced to chose wrong, nor will he force us to make the right choice, but He will always ensure that we are capable of making a choice. One thing that we have been speaking about recently is how God is our heavenly father. He really is in every way. Like a father, he doesnt want his kids to hang around the house and just live purely off of his guidance and help for their entire lives, he desires their independance. We are still weak, unsure, like children, but he is preparing us to become independant, to be able more and more to survive on our own. As we get stronger, we understand more about how to recognize the spirit. We have a long way to go, but we all decide to progress or degress baced on our choices. It's a very simple plan that he has for us, but a powerful one, because our eventual goal is to become like Him. And what an incredible goal that is!

When you think about life with that goal in mind, it becomes very clear what is important and what is not important.

(Scenery from the Shonan Ward Campout)

One quote (I forgot who said this), is 'When you put the Lord first, all other things will fall into place, or drop out of our lives.'

When we truly dedicate ourselves to what is best for us (the plan that he gave us), I think our priorities will become less grey. It is difficult to keep an eternal perspective, but if we do we can make the right decisions, for the right reasons! Anyways, just a thought for today.

I love you all, I will see you soon. good luck and have fun,

Elder Martin D Mumford,

TOKYO, JAPAN.

Expect the Unexpected!

For some reason, this video really made me laugh!

What do you think?

VIDEO:

Click on the "PLAY" arrow to view.

And now for Elder Mumford's e-mail, dated June 14th, 2010:

Dear Everyone,

Some new news,

We have officially entered the perpetual rainstorm that is June-July. Im really glad though, because up till now we have had perfect weather every single day this transfer, and the rain is only just now starting to come down. However, Koiwa is such an awewsome area that even in the hardest rain durring the most deserted time of day we can still meet lots of cool people out on the street who are willing to listen to us. I don't really understand it, because there is just such a huge noticable difference between everywhere I've been before, and Koiwa, in that everyone we talk to will listen to us and try to understand what we are saying. Maybe it's the conditions here, or the area, or the kind of people that live around here, maybe it's our attitude (Elder Williams is the man, he has the best attitude of anyone I've ever met so far on my mission). Maybe it's just our outrageously good looks, or skillfull intelligent Japanese, or maybe our exceptionally great humility (we're probably the most humble companionship in the mission, if I do say so myself).

(Elder Mumford and Elder Williams- Dashingly Handsome!)

Or maybe the Lord just sees fit to show us miracles every day, because in the grand scheme of his great plan (of which we are only a tiny little piece), the timing is just right, in this place, that we should see them.

But whatever the reason, we are working hard and we are happy here in Koiwa. I really hope that I get to stay here, it's been an awesome experience. I think the coolest thing that could possibly happen is if me and Elder Williams get to stay here in Koiwa, but I dont know yet what's going to happen. Whatever does happen, we'll both do great wherever we end up, Im sure.

It sounds like you've been having some cool miracles at home recently as well. I really think that God is willing to give you opportunities to help others, only to the extent that you want to have them, and when you take that step, the chance to follow through and help someone will be given.

Recently we have had some nice things happen;

We have 4 investigators right now, and 1 Less active we're focusing on;

1. Yoshida - met on the street, taught him about the restoration, and he had interest but didnt want to give us any contact info. He showed up to English Class on Wednesday, and signed up for a 30 minute introductory lesson. After the lesson he said he had interest in religions and would like to hear about the restoration, which we are going ot teach him today. We thought that that would be that, and that the next time we would see him would be today, but on Sunday, he just showed up to church, all by himself without us even inviting him, and he stayed for all 3 hours. We gave him a Book of Mormon, and were able to explain just a little bit about it. So today should be really interesting.

(Elder Mumford and the Sumo Wrestler. They meet him at a restaurant, so he can eat, while they teach him.)

2. Higuchi - a genki nice grandpa who has been coming to English class for a long time, but recenetly he would like to hear more about the Purpose of Life, so we are meeting him on Weednesday to discuss more about the plan of Slavation. He is very nice, and has read a little of the book of mormon before.

3. Sekino - The miracle man from a few weeks ago, who just invited us to come to his house and teach a lesson. He cant meet until the 21st of June, so we just dropped off a lesson pamphlet in the mean time. But when that day comes he should ha ve lots of questions.

(Elder WIlliams with the Sumo.)

4. Taiun - a 20's ish Chinese student who we met on the street. He also came to all 3 hours of church, and also a Family Home Evening at a member's house afterwards. Unfortunately, he doesnt really speak Japanese, or even English, and so we are having a very hard time explainign what it is that we do exactly. He wants to meet, but we can't really effectively explain much, only when we write the Kanji whe will understand it. So we are waiting a little bit more until one of the Chinese members in the ward has a little bit of time to come to a lesson and help us out. Both Taiun and Yoshida want to come to Stake Conferecen next week.

(5) Also, Shinobu, a less active, who was baptized when he was 8, but ever since then never came to church. He doesnt know much about the church, but he recently read the entire book of mormon in 1 week. He also cuts the missionaries hair for free, so he has lots of experience with missionaries. Recently he has nwanted to get an answer or a confirmation about the church really bad, but even reading the book of mormon didnt seem to give him what he was looking for. He is going to try to read the whole bible too, but our concern is that reading the entire bible is nice, but much like reading the entire book of mormon, the answer is not information. The answer is not hidden on page ?? somewhere, and knowing more information won't really help you with Faith. So from now we are trying to help him get an answer by building faith, rather than knowledge.

If you could pray for these 5 people, I think that God will assist them in their persuit of happiness.

(Jo (from Brazil) Elder King, Elder Mumford, and Manabu-san.)

Anyways, thanks for everything that you do for me, thanks for the great letters, and packages, and everything else. This is a great time to be in Japan!

Have a great week!

-Elder Martin Mumford

TOKYO JAPAN.

Miracles

E-mail dated 6/6/10:

Dear Everyone,

First of all, the non-spiritual stuff :)

I put the SD card in an envelope last week... and we never sent it. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) we have been blessed with a lot of teaching/finding opportunites, and we have not had a spare moment to hit up the post office. But to day is finally P-day, and I will send it right away.

Ok, now for this week's experiences:

Miracle #1- About a month ago, Elder Williams and his trainer Elder Macdonald met a sumo on the train ride home. It turns out he lives really close to us and to the church, and so they exchanged phone numbers. Then, two weeks ago, we called and were able to set up an appointment to meet him over Udon (thick Japanese noodle soup) to talk about what we do here in Japan. We met him in the restraunt, and asked him a lot about what kind of training it takes to become a Sumo, which there is a lot. (bad english, sorry)

(2 Nephi 4:34)

(click on scripture reference to view)

I thought there might be some sort of diet or special perscribed food, but he just said that they can eat anything at all, as long as they eat a lot of it. (He's a very, very huge guy. He's only 20, and he's dual majoring with economics and sumo wrestling). So then we asked him if there was any mental training involved, and there was, a lot like meditation. And so we connected it to how in life of course we train our bodies, but in a very similar way we are here to train our spirit as well, and the more we work at it the stronger it gets. And God has shown us the way, but like the coach and the sensei give directions on the best way to improve. We may think that we know best, but in reality if we follow exactly what the sensei and coaches say, we will improve more than we could by ourselves.

So that turned out to be a great meeting, and he wants to meet us agian sometime for a legitimate lesson. Of course, we had to take pictures after :)

(More "old Japanese arms")

Miracle #2 - We met a chinese college student on the street on sunday, and then on monday we had an appointment with some members for dinner. Right outside their house, we were 5 minutes early, so we crossed the street to see if we could talk to maybe one more person. And right there we met the same guy again! His name is Taiun, and he just barely came to Japan 2 months ago. He was going home to make dinner for himself, so we invited him to come with us to the dinner with the members which actually turned out great! We happened to have a Chinese book of mormon on us, which we could give to him. So we basically all just explained what the book is about and why it is importnat to us.

And now we are going to meet today too, to talk more about it.

Miracle #3 - MAPLE SYRUP... THANK YOU!!!! that is so precious and valuable. I think with the bottle, and the make-it-yourself bottle we now have enough for the rest of this transfer and the next. Thanks so much.

(Precious "maple" syrup- A real treat in Japan.)

Miracle #4 - On sunday, we met with 3 other chinese college students. (there are actually a LOT of chiense people living in our area), who we were also able to give 3 more book of mormons to. One of them had studied religions of the world pretty thuroughly, and the other two were very interested. So that was a miracle as well.

Miracle #5,6,7,8,9... etc... This week was nothing but miracles, this coming week is also lined up to be amazing. Im sure I forgot most of them, but Ill try to de better at remembering next week. I actually have a little less time now, because we have started getting some peoples emails on the street, and Im using a part of my email time to talk to them and see if we can meet. But I think it will just be a temporary thing. but thank you everyone for the great support, I really can feel the love of everyone praying for me and supporting me half-way across the world.

This is the best time ever,

Thanks, Have Fun!

Elder Martin Mumford,

Tokyo, JAPAN.

Koiwa Continues

(Ginsu Mumford slices and dices vegetables for Mabudoufu)

Here is Elder Mumford's e-mail from Japan, dated June 1, 2010:

Dear Everyone,

It's good to hear from you all :) And no worries, the package(s) and letters all arrived safely. The cheese was just fine. Even better, we made tacos again. We actually were having lunch one day, and we had made Mabodofu (a chinese food with tofu, meat, veggies, and rice). We decided to just finish off all the taco meat from the last time and throw it into the mabodofu. It ended up completely overpowering the chinese flavor, and just ended up ttasting like mexican food anyways. So we brought out the tortillas and wraped it up!

VIDEO:

Click the "Play" arrow to view.

Also we've been trying a lot of new things, with the materials we've got. We've been having a lot of breakfast for dinner recently, with various kinds of pancakes. So a few days ago we threw in the reces pieces bits into the batter and fried it up. It was very peanut buttery.

(Frog Shaped pancake, created by Elder Mumford)

Also in the package, I was excited to see the pop rocks! Wow it's been a long time since Ive seen those. I had some, but then we had to go and so I left the open package on my desk. When we came back that night, I went to finish off the pop rocks, and to my suprise the humidity in the air had actually fried them all into a kind of goo that had fused into the package. Kind of cool I guess. They were always more of an 'entertainment' food than for actually eating anyways :)

Today before we came to email we had a mini-cleaning of the apartment (halfway through a transfer it gets really dusty and junk starts to pile up everywhere). So that was 'fun'. But I've really come to realize that I cannot live, I just can't survive without a garbage disposal. That is the one thing Ill never be able to give up in my life. You know everything that goes down a normal sink? Bits of food, crumbs, every scrap of crusty stuff on each bowl/dish? All of that goes down the drain and is caught by a handy little net/baggie thing. Which then fills up slowly with all the food bits and eventually turns into a putrid light brown goo. The sinks literally do not accept anything except for 100% liquid, so we have to use the nets or else the sinks will eventually clog. The hard part is changing the nets, but we pulled through it ok. Its just that that will be one of those simple gifts that Ill be happy to embrace once Im back. :)

VIDEO:

Click the "Play" arrow to view.

But this week we have seen so many miracles. Let me tell you about a few of them;

1. We were walking along the street, and Elder Williams talked to this guy who was just leaving a convenience store. He asked him 'why do you think people die? What is the purpose of it?', and the guy thought about it for a while, and said, 'I dont know, but come to my house and you can tell me all about it'. So we followid him to his house, we sat down and taught him about the Restoration. Which just blew his mind. He's kind of busy at the moment, but we're going to meet with him in a week or two to talk more about it. We was very interested in the Book of Mormon. His name is Sekino. He has a pet turtle named Leonardo (just thought that was funny).

(Turtles in the park, in Japan)

2. Elder Williams stopped this really old nice grampa walking dow the street. When he heard that we were voulenteers for 2 years here, he wanted to buy us coffee for some reason. Unfortunately we cant drink coffee, but he insisted on getting us somehting, so he bought us both strawberry parfaits. Way funny guy, but after a few minutes we could tell he really only had interest in talking to gaijin (americans) than really hearing about the gospel so we had to leave him with some information and say goodbye. Very nice person. He talked a lot about how in Japan no one ever hugs eachother or holds hands or expresses love in any way.

I wanted to show him that our Heavenly Father loves us, and so I asked him,

'you have a daughter, so do you love her?'

and he said, 'yes'

'so how much do you love her?'

and he said along the lines of 'maybe a little bit. kind of.'

which really blew me away because most people will usually say 'a lot' or something like that. So I wansnt really sure what to say to that, but we still told him more about God and how he really does love us because we are his children. It was just a very interesting experience

3. A few weeks ago (I forgot to tell you, maybe?) We were walking down towards the train station, and we stopped someone, who turned around. And he turned out to be from England, which took me by suprise because he looked completely Japanese from the back :) But we ended up talking to him all the way back to the train station, about what we're doing in Japan and what kind of message we share. He was curious about Mormons, because he had heard that we cant drink coffe. And he asked why we dont... if there was some sort of a reason. We told him that of course there are things like that that we follow, no alcohol, coffe, tea, smoking... but just by looking at that you might get the impression that we follow it for health reasons. But we explained that really, no one needs religion to tell them what is good or bad for thier health. You dont need God to tell you that smoking is bad for your body. You can get that information without believing in God.

But the real reason that we follow the word of wisdom, as with any commandment, is because it is just that... a commandment. We do whatever God asks us to do because it is a test of our willingness to follow him. And he wants to see if we are responsible enough to recieve the belessings that he has to give us. In reality, it comes down to 'did God really ask me to follow this, or did someone make this up? Is this a true principle, or just someone's opinion? If it comes from God we follow it, and we can all know, individually if it is true or not. Quite literally we can recieve an individual answer to our prayers, which will prove to us what is true. Because if this church is not true, there is absolutely no purpose in following its teachings.

So we explained that the most important thing in this church is for everyone to know for themselves whether it is true or not. We dont want anyone at all to be blindly obeying because their parents told them too, or because it sounds like a good idea, we want each person to know 100% with that assurance from God (not from other people, but from God Himself) that this is the best path we could be taking in life. Nothing short of that will cut it. And if you really want to know, and ask him, and are willing to follow whatever answer you may get God will tell you, guaranteed.

He thought that was pretty cool. Of course this was all in English so it was way easy to explain (I somehow doubt that I could say all of that in Japanese), but I htink he rocgnized that there was something important about what we were doing here. That we're not here to try and convince or trick or persuade someone to join our church. We're not here to promote 'good morals'. We're not here to make the church bigger. We are here to tell people how they can know (for THEMSELVES!) that it is true. That is the best part of being in Japan for me.

Anyways there was some other cool miracles this week, but I think I forgot them already. I hope that everyone is having a great time, enjoying themselves and working hard. Thanks for the great letters! I got so many at once due to the mailbox misunderstanding, but it was WAY fun!

Thanks for everything, I love you all!

-Elder Martin Mumford,

TOKYO JAPAN.